Shakily, Mom lifts her teacup, sips, sets it down. A perilous brave performance. She is proud of something; he can tell by the way she sits, upright, her neck cords stretched. Her hair has been brushed tight about her head. Tight and almost glossy. “Mim,” she says, “went calling today.”

Rabbit asks, “On who?”

Mim answers. “On Janice. At Springer Motors.”

“Well.” Rabbit pushes back from the table, his chair legs scraping. “What did the little mutt have to say for herself?”

“Nothing. She wasn’t there.”

“Where was she?”

“He said seeing a lawyer.”

“Old man Springer said that?” Fear slides into his stomach, nibbling. The law. The long white envelope. Yet he likes the idea of Mim going over there and standing in one of her costumes in front of the Toyota cutout, a gaudy knife into the heart of the Springer empire. Mim, their secret weapon.

“No,” she tells him, “not old man Springer. Stavros.”

“You saw Charlie there? Huh. How does he look? Beat?”

“He took me out to lunch.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know, some Greek place in the black district.”

Rabbit has to laugh. People dead and dying all around him, he has to let it out. “Wait’ll he tells her that.”

Mim says, “I doubt he will.”

Pop is slow to follow. “Who’re we talking about, Mim? That slick talker turned Janice’s head?”

Mom’s face gropes; her eyes stretch as if she is strangling while her mouth struggles to frame a droll thought. In suspense they all fall silent. “Her lover,” she pronounces. A sick feeling stabs Rabbit.

Pop says, “Well I’ve kept my trap shut throughout this mess, don’t think Harry there wasn’t a temptation to meddle but I kept my peace, but a lover in my book is somebody who loves somebody through thick and thin and from all I hear this smooth operator is just after the ass. The ass and the Springer name. Pardon the expression.”

“I think,” Mom says, faltering though her face still shines. “It’s nice. To know Janice has.”

“An ass,” Mim finally completes for her. And it seems to Rabbit wicked that these two, Pop and Mim, are corrupting Mom on the edge of the grave. Coldly he asks Mim, “What’d you and Chas talk about?”

“Oh,” Mim says, “things.” She shrugs her knitted hip off the kitchen table, where she has been perched as on a bar stool. “Did you know, he has a rheumatic heart? He could kick off at any minute.”

“Fat chance,” Rabbit says.

“That type of operator,” Pop says, snarling his teeth back into place, “lives to be a hundred, while they bury all the decent natural Americans. Don’t ask me why it works that way, the Lord must have His reasons.”

Mim says, “I thought he was sweet. And quite intelligent. And much nicer about you all than you are about him. He was very thoughtful about Janice, he’s probably the first person in thirty years to give her some serious attention as a person. He sees a lot in her.”